Lewis: Olympic cancellation not good for NOCs

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Nigel Simon - Senior Sports Reporter

20200521172707

20200522

brian-lewis-ttoc-president

ttoc.org

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee says a great num­ber of Na­tion­al Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tees will be put in a 'big hole' fi­nan­cial­ly should the resched­uled 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games set for next year fail to come off.

On Wednes­day, In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee Pres­i­dent Thomas Bach said he un­der­stood why the resched­uled Tokyo 2020 Games would have to be can­celled if it can­not take place next sum­mer.

This af­ter lo­cal or­gan­is­ers said they have no back-up plan af­ter the event was post­poned by a year be­cause of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis.

In a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view, Bach al­so ad­mit­ted the job of re-or­gan­is­ing the Games was "a mam­moth task"; warned that the event would "def­i­nite­ly be dif­fer­ent" with a fo­cus on "es­sen­tials"; would not be drawn on whether a vac­cine for Covid-19 would be need­ed for the event to take place and in­sist­ed stag­ing the Games be­hind closed doors was "not what we want", but he needs more time to con­sid­er whether that was fea­si­ble

Bach said he hoped the first-ever post­poned Games, which are due to take place from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8, 2021, could prove "unique" and send "a mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty among the en­tire world, com­ing for the first time to­geth­er again, and cel­e­brat­ing the tri­umph over coro­n­avirus".

"There is no blue­print for it so we have to rein­vent the wheel day by day. It's very chal­leng­ing and at the same time fas­ci­nat­ing."

With re­gards to find­ing a vac­cine Japan's Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe ad­mit­ted it may be "dif­fi­cult" to stage the Games if the coun­try does not suc­cess­ful­ly con­tain the virus, and the head of the Japan Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion sug­gest­ed it de­pends on find­ing a vac­cine.

When asked di­rect­ly if he agreed, Bach said: "For this ques­tion, we are re­ly­ing on the ad­vice of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"We have es­tab­lished one prin­ci­ple: to or­gan­ise these Games in a safe en­vi­ron­ment for all the par­tic­i­pants. No­body knows what the world will look like in one year, in two months.

"So we have to re­ly on [ex­perts] and then take the ap­pro­pri­ate de­ci­sion at the ap­pro­pri­ate time based on this ad­vice."

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Lewis stat­ed: "With­in re­cent days the IOC pres­i­dent has in­di­cat­ed that if the Olympics can't be held next year it will be can­celled.

"That will have a sig­nif­i­cant and tremen­dous neg­a­tive im­pact on the busi­ness and fund­ing mod­el of the Olympic move­ment and if that should hap­pen it will put some NOC's in a big hole.

"And if that should hap­pen the T&TOC will al­so find it­self fac­ing some dif­fi­cul­ties and chal­lenges. So there is re­al "grey cloud" ahead giv­en the un­cer­tain­ties and re­al­i­ties of covid19.

"But that hav­ing been said, the TTOC we have been en­gaged in sev­er­al dis­cus­sions in terms of piv­ot­ing and look­ing at ways to ad­just and pre­pare for the post COVID-19 re­al­i­ty.

"We are look­ing at some strate­gic ini­tia­tives which are aimed at pro­vid­ing the Olympic Com­mit­tee with sus­tain­able rev­enue streams giv­en the new nor­mal of what we an­tic­i­pate will be the post-covid19 world.

Asked what long term im­pact it may have on the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body, Lewis said he was con­fi­dent that they will be able to weath­er the storm.

He added, "Since 2013 we have been fo­cus­ing strate­gic at­ten­tion on trans­form­ing and mod­ernising the TTOC's mar­ket­ing mod­el and in many ways that have proven very suc­cess­ful and we will need to build on some of those ini­tia­tives and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the TTOC's rev­enue stream.

"We are re­main­ing very proac­tive and it's im­por­tant to re­main that proac­tive, in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative," end­ed Lewis.